93-year-old feels bullied by WDM mobile home park manager's long list of demands

In Iowa, residents have reported a litany of issues in manufactured housing parks across the state. Sales of the homes have been on the rise the past seven years, industry officials say.
Lee Rood / The Register

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Dorothy Funk outside her manufactured home at Western Village.(Photo11: Lee Rood/The Register)Buy Photo

Dorothy Funk strolls up to the door of her double-wide mobile home in West Des Moines in a perky leopard-print ensemble, proudly showing off the cozy living room with white couches and red accents she's kept up since 1977.

Funk says she's "93 going on 66," and enjoyed 39 of the past 40 years she’s lived among other seniors in Western Village mobile home park at 2000 Grand Ave.

Not 2017, though. This year has been stressful as hell, she said.

Over the summer and fall, the widow has received several notices giving her 48 hours to comply with different orders to do work on her manufactured home and garage.

The most recent from park manager Nancy Shelley came late last week and gave Funk until Monday to paint her white home, or at least get the job scheduled.

Failure to comply meant risking eviction from the private Wes Des Moines park for those 55 and older.

"I know we're seniors, but we still have our brains," Funk complained. "This is senior abuse."

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A notice Dorothy Funk received Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, urged her to paint her home. Failure to comply can result in an eviction notice, the park manager said.(Photo11: Lee Rood/The Register)

Funk’s manufactured home is older, but it is not in bad shape — inside or out. There’s dirt splattered around some of the skirting, some faded paint near the side door and cracks in the driveway, but no more than most regular wear and tear on a home.

In 2010, in a yearlong series called “Trapped,” I documented some of the worst living conditions you can imagine in mobile home parks across Iowa.

The stories underscored how state law affecting mobile home residents is so lopsided, tenants can be — and are — kicked out of the private parks for almost any reason.

The worst problems were in rogue parks owned by a Colorado millionaire, where decrepit and unsafe homes were being sold off to the poorest of the poor.

Those who churned through such parks frequently lost their down payments and all the cash shelled out for improvements because the old trailer homes they'd purchased were too frail to move.

Park owners would then resell the homes, even though some didn't have legal title.

Funk’s problem is almost the reverse. The standards she and the 250 other lot renters in Western Village are being held to are very high — though still at the whim of the park manager, Shelley.

Shelley, 80, said she’s requiring more preventive upkeep at Western Village at the request of owner MHCI. She said the previous park manager was fired for being too lax, and she intends to make sure the place doesn't go downhill.

Every Thursday, Shelley said, she patrols the park, writing residents up for not edging their lawns, pulling weeds, putting garbage cans in the garage, or hanging curtains in the windows.

"Dorothy was not singled out," she said. "Last week, I wrote up 21 houses."

Shelley said she had no intention of evicting Funk, but she also couldn't say whether she was done making demands for work. When I mentioned she held the power to evict any tenant, she smiled and replied, "yes."

Tuesday morning, I contacted Justin Pounder, MHCI’s vice president of operations. He acknowledged the company did ask Shelley to assure Western Village remains a “five-star community.”

But he said he didn’t know Funk was 93, and he said Shelley needs to do her work compassionately.

"That's someone we would value," he said of Funk. "I will certainly rectify that."

I told Pounder that Funk just spent around $2,000 doing repairs previously requested by Shelley, and that it was unclear to her how much more work the new park manager would demand.

Funk also contended she’s been a perfect resident all these years and has always stayed on top of her home's needed repairs. But she also lives on a fixed income and had to have 10 blood transfusions this year for anemia.

Excessive repairs aren't in the budget.

Pounder said he personally would have a look at her home and assess the issues, if there were any.

“Nancy is somewhat strict. We don’t want the park to deteriorate," he said. "We’re trying to prevent what has happened at so many other parks. But it has to be done the right way.”

Almost no protection

Part of Funk’s concerns would be alleviated if Iowa legislators had passed a measure proposed after the “Trapped” series ran in 2010.

House Study Bill 600 would have required landlords to at least provide a legitimate reason for terminating someone's lease in a mobile home park.

Other provisions of the bill called for a minimum one-year lease and giving tenants 14 days to make up back rent, instead of the current three.

That legislation, like several others before it over the past 20 years, was supported by several housing groups and others who advocate for the vulnerable.

But it was dead on arrival, in large part because of opposition by lobbyists for park owners.

Most residents' forfeit ownership of their homes because they cannot move them.

Kornya said Legal Aid recently took action in a case where a park manager broke the finger of a pregnant woman while trying to block the sale of a manufactured home by someone being evicted.

He said Iowans need only glance at the state's law governing manufactured housing communities, 562B, and compare the rights of residents to those in Iowa's Landlord Tenant Act, 562A, to see how much more vulnerable mobile-home dwellers are.

"There are also scam situations where both the mobile home and the land are being rented, and the landlord will try to take advantage by enacting two separate leases for the lot and dwelling," he said.

In doing so, the landlord is attempting to skirt the requirements of the Landlord Tenant Act as well as local housing code requirements, he said.

Legal Aid cannot lobby for better state or local ordinances, but it has gone to great lengths to try to protect families who need the kind of affordable housing the nation's roughly 60,000 mobile home parks offer.

Des Moines' affordable housing problem

Attorneys there recently submitted a brief on behalf of several largely Hispanic families being ousted from a mobile home park on the south side of Des Moines.

The brief requests that Iowa's Court of Appeals reverse a district court decision ordering owner Mark Ogden to cease operations as a mobile home park on the northwest corner of Indianola Road and Park Avenue.

In it, the lawyers noted research showing that those who live in manufactured housing have roughly half the median income of other families, about $26,000.

They also noted long waiting lists for affordable housing, which has become a major issue as the metro area grows and the federal budget for subsidized housing shrinks.

The day after I called Pounder, Dorothy received a message from Shelley. She said it told her to disregard the last notice ordering her to paint her home. And the manager asked to let her know if there was anything MHCI could do to help her.

Funk is hoping MHCI, which just raised its lot rent, will continue to do right by her after 40 years as a solid customer.

But advocates for the poor and elderly say it's a pity that state or local laws don't do more to protect people like her.

Lee Rood's Reader's Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Contact her atlrood@dmreg.com, 515-284-8549 on Twitter @leerood or at Facebook.com/readerswatchdog.